"Building the Collection", a handsome and detailed volume, traces the National Gallery of Australia’s efflorescence through the forest of officialdom. Appropriately, it begins with an interview with James Mollison and ends with a flourish from its current director, Brian Kennedy. In between, it proceeds as a kind of memoir, with a cast of characters — curators, council members and others — contributing a forensic cross-hatching of memories and events to its years of collecting, displaying and stoushing. There are some factual overlaps as various curators recall the glory days, but this is mere carping.